I’ve been photographing in digital infrared (IR) for nearly 15 years and for the last two years, I’ve been playing around with color IR after having two of my Nikon cameras converted to 590nm and 720nm IR cameras. I thought I’d provide a sample of the different color palattes you can achieve in Lightroom and/or Photoshop. I shot these images from the apartment in Vancouver in November when some of the leaves were turning color and falling from the trees.
Here is a color digital infrared image directly out of my camera. You’ll notice the red cast.
I edited the image in Lightroom using a preset that I created to neutralize the red cast which helps you see how the foliage becomes cotton candy blue in IR. Here’s the resulting image:
Another technique I use is to bring the original image into Photoshop and use the Channel Mixer to swap the red channel and the blue channel. This will change the foliage to warm colors rather than the cool blue:
The color palatte I choose for the final image will change depending on the composition of the photograph and the elements in it. Which does your eye prefer?
